1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a structure of plasma display panels.
The present application claims priority from Japanese Application No. 2004-323240, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
A surface-discharge-type alternating-current plasma display panel (hereinafter referred to as “PDP”) has two opposing glass substrates placed on either side of a discharge-gas-filled discharge space. On one of the two glass substrates, row electrode pairs extending in the row direction are regularly arranged in the column direction. On the other glass substrate, column electrodes extending in the column direction are regularly arranged in the row direction. Unit light emission areas (discharge cells) are formed in matrix form in positions corresponding to the intersections between the row electrode pairs and the column electrodes in the discharge space. Phosphor layers to which red, green and blue colors are individually applied are provided in the respective unit light emission areas in the discharge space.
The PDP further has a dielectric layer provided for covering the row electrodes or the column electrodes. A magnesium oxide (MgO) film is formed on a portion of the dielectric layer facing each of the unit light emission areas. The MgO film has the function of protecting the dielectric layer and the function of emitting secondary electrons into the unit light emission area.
The recently dominant one of PDPs structured as described above has an approximate grid shaped partition wall unit provided between the two glass substrates to partition the discharge space into the unit light emission areas.
Such a conventional PDP is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Application No. 2000-285808, for example.
The PDP having such a partition wall unit has the advantage of an improvement in brightness because the surface area of the phosphor layers is increased by forming the phosphor layers on the side faces of the partition wall unit. However, when, due to the formation of the partition wall unit, adjacent unit light emission areas arranged in the column direction are blocked off from each other, the amount of priming particles traveling between the adjacent unit light emission areas in the column direction is decreased. This decrease in turn gives rise to the problem of a reduction in the discharge probability of the address discharge caused for selecting the unit light emission areas for light emission, for example.